Can You Compost Beans: A pro guide
Before we know if we can compost beans or not, it becomes essential to know the accurate meaning of compost and composting. Hence, composting refers to treating kitchen leftovers, like vegetable or fruit piles, with dried leaves in a pot, preferably terracotta. Here, the formed element is known as compost, which is rich in nutrition, and it can enhance the growth of plants by being added as a fertilizer.
Nowadays, people like you have become conscious that compromising on the quality of a food product may lead to some serious health hazards, and in some cases, the repercussions can be quite fatal for them.
Also, many of them have started to grow plants in their kitchen garden. To grow a plant in a healthy atmosphere, you should always use compost, and it can be made from leftovers present abundantly in the kitchen.
Now, coming back to the question, “Can you compost beans?” So, the answer is a big yes! You can easily make compost with any beans as a key ingredient.
Which types of beans are suitable to be composted?
There are no restrictions imposed on any single variety of beans for composting. Whether cooked, partially cooked, or fully raw, any beans can be adequately used. Sounders of these beans are as follows:
• Green beans (French, Runner)
• Blue Lake beans
• Algarv beans
• Pinto beans
• Coffee beans
• Peas
• Kidney beans
• Linna beans
• Soya beans
But always keep in mind that the beans used to make compost should be free of pathogens and weed forms; otherwise, the disease-causing should spread the harmful infections generation of plants during the phenomenon of selfing.
Necessary Conditions To compost Beans
Beans can only be composted if some minor and significant environmental conditions are kept in mind. These requirements may be based on some physical-chemical or biological aspects, which have been stated below:
1. The standard size of the pile should be according to the equipment:
For household composting, the pile size to be composted has to be moderate, and it should neither be a miniature layer nor an enormous one. The dimensions should not fall below three cubic feet and exceed about seven cubic feet.
This measurement helps in the proper heat management in the central part of the container, where the temperature gets exceptionally high for helpful microorganisms to start the process of decomposing beans. The pile should be located on a leveled ground or surface.
Also, you can focus on the measurement keenly to know the approximate value of compost generated after some months. The size may vary depending upon the length of your equipment in which beans will be composted.
Later, beans and kitchen leftovers can be used to make proper layers. You can make these coatings by developing a thick sheet of beans over an equal-sized sheet of moist fruit or vegetable peels.
These surface layers rapidly tend to blend after you constantly turn the underlying heap with the help of hands by wearing gloves. This process of turning up is continuously carried out for at least two months, every 2 to 3 weeks.
2. Proper air to allow ventilation:
The layering and equipment structure of the to-be-made bean compost should be placed adequately to ensure that the pile is airy enough. Also, beans and other layers of compost should not be tightly clogged in together, as it may lead to the destruction of its natural porous state.
This can result in an insufficient ventilation supply to the compost present underneath, and the scarcity of its genuine amount can cause the process to quickly or gradually slow down. In some rare cases, the action of microorganisms in decomposition eventually stops too.
Imagine your room, fully devoid of windows on a hot sunny day, without any fan or air-conditioner. What will happen? There is no denying that your room will be non-ventilating, and you will feel highly suffocated.
Also, the bad odors and foul smells will soon start to accumulate and finally spread throughout your room, making it difficult for you to even breathe in search of an atmosphere.
Apart from this, when you use the term ‘organic ways of composting,’ it becomes necessary to have a correct ratio of carbon and oxygen in a pile.
But if it experiences a deficiency of air, carbon, and oxygen due to any reason, the organic way becomes flawed, thereby leaving the leftover wholly inorganic.
3. Righteous percentage of humidity:
Just like a person requires an optimum amount of water to stay hydrated, composed needs water to provide humidity or nourishment to compost beans.
As in summers, we usually need plenty of water to remain hydrated, which helps the body to carry out some important functions. Composting below 40% moisture level does not decompose, and it stops the enzymatic activity of microbes or microorganisms present in a heap.
In winters, we consume comparatively less water because of the decreased perspiration in the body. Compost above 60% level of moisture clogs the porous structure of the soil, resulting in anaerobic respiration. In this case, leaching or splashing out of compost may also occur, which wipes or washes away all the nutrients and organic manure.
After some days, the moisture content can gradually increase when the composting beans reach the maturation stage. Hence, you must ensure that moisture content in the compost should always be according to the environmental conditions.
While using composting worms, 80 to 90% of the moisture is supposed to be provided because the bodies of such worms are made up of 75% water, so they can tolerate extremes of humidity. This ability helps them to perform many vital functions related to ingestion, assimilation, digestion, and egestion.
4. Using shavings or shredded leaves as a dry layer:
Leaves and branches of trees and twigs serve as the most natural dry layer to compost beans. They are used along with beans, whether cooked or uncooked. Leaves also provide roughage and are highly organic elements. They can help in an easy flow of air through pores in the soil and have an extract and tendency of improving drainage.
The small fragments and shavings of leaves are highly rich in some important elements to ensure the plant’s growth. More than half or one-third of the rich nutrients of the tree end up after getting stored in the leaves. They do not get along with most other nitrogenous sources without shredding, restricting decomposition for many years.
It can be easily done with the help of leaves falling in autumn. On using a mower, you get simplified shredded fragments of leaves by passing them through the device many times. These leaves also take a tiny room in the composting pile and beans.
So, to compost any kind of beans, you can wholeheartedly be reliable over shreds as they absorb a more significant amount of moisture and have a high carbon content.
If you use a full pile of leaves without shredding, the surface area and the volume of the dry coat will end up becoming large enough, due to which it will become complicated to add more layers of the power above or below the beans.
It will also become impossible to turn up the compost for balancing the nutrients or humidity in all spots and corners of the composting unit.
5. Beans aid in nitrogen fixation:
The growth of beans occurs in a relationship with bacteria based on mutual association. Here, bacteria consume nitrogen from the compost in its gaseous state and provide it to the beans. Hence, the microorganisms present in a pile and worms in the soil disintegrate them into nitrates and ammonium.
After the beans are composed, it becomes a natural fertilizer that can be used to grow different plants. If put in the right amount, nitrogen results in the normal growth of verbs and shrubs by encouraging flower and fruit production and healthy plants.
Nitrogen helps in building the protoplasm of the plant cell. It is a crucial part that causes the shoot to grow quickly, and flower buds start to attain a healthy atmosphere. It helps in producing some other important minerals too.
6. Moderate temperature or sunlight:
On a sunny day, the bean compost is more likely to have extremes of temperature at its Central part. This results in the fast decomposition of organic matter by decomposers and microorganisms.
The optimum temperature for this to work is between 60 degrees Celsius and 65 degrees Celsius. It causes harmful diseases or infections, causing microorganisms along with unwanted weeds to die.
The container or the pot in which the beans have to be composted should be properly insulated. It implies that the unit must have its walls resistant to the heat evolving exothermic reactions.
Many times, high tolerance to sunlight increases the temperature inside the unit, which eventually leads to the shortage of nitrogen, as it starts to form vapors in the atmosphere, actuating the carbon-nitrogen ratio.
On the other hand, if it suddenly falls, it is to be assumed that the pile has become an oxygen deficit, due to which respiration has started to occur. The unit must be provided with excellent ventilation or aeration in such a case.
Therefore, the bean compost has to be neither very hot nor cool and the temperature should always be optimum; otherwise, the decomposing abruptly stops.
7. Never add non-nutritive or miscellaneous stuff to the compost:
The beans have a natural essence, which is quite exotic. But, on adding some non-nutritive or miscellaneous stuff, the expected results of bean composting may tend to drift away and lead to unwanted ingrowths of pests.
Many such things should never be added, like meat, sugar, infected leaves, etc. Meat can cause a foul smell in compost development, inviting pathogens towards them. Sugar produces yeast, which is another microorganism.
On adding it, yeast and bacteria may fight against each other for survival. Infected leaves can also give rise to infections, leading to the growth of microbes. These infections can also be transmitted to the next generation of plants during selfing.
Another element known as cooking oil brings generation in nutritional value, so it should never be used. Dairy or lactose products like milk, butter, and curd attract pests and flies, whereas greeting cards and magazines are non-compostable to the presence of foil.
Also, non-biodegradable or synthetic soaps can deteriorate this process. Vegetables like onion, garlic, and peels of some fruits having a higher proportion of citric acid should be avoided because they may kill some useful microorganisms required for decomposition.
Coal ash, being rich in sulfur, can make the compost acidified, and tomato fruits will lead to the formation of some tiny sprouts at every place where the manure is added. Hence, miscellaneous stuff like these should be neglected and never be added to compost beans.
Check out our other post to know how to compost beans in detail.
Conclusion
Consequently, to compost beans, the requirements mentioned above are of extreme necessity as they lead to the healthy growth of plants in which they are put as an organic fertilizer.
There are many ways in which beans can be composted. Still, the essential one is to simply mix it along with some other shreds of dried leaves and make evenly coated layers on the surface three to four times, mainly depending upon the dimensions of your equipment.
Always put the matter that can be decomposed easily and naturally in the environment as it does not disturb the biological and chemical flowcharts in the atmosphere.
Therefore, composting beans are not difficult if proper measures are taken to grow healthy herbs and shrubs. So, now when you know that beans can be composted, what are you waiting for?
